


The Reluctant Guardian Angel

by Blue_Pandas



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Alternate Universe, Casual Murder, Deception, Don’t copy to another site, Gen, M/M, Pre-Relationship, warning: Tom's personality
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-06-14
Updated: 2019-06-14
Packaged: 2020-05-07 11:26:08
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,032
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19208422
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Blue_Pandas/pseuds/Blue_Pandas
Summary: Punishment after death is working for a company called Kind Strangers and being expected to make miracles for random idiots. Tom hates his job, but he’s good at it.At least he is until he meets Harry Potter, ignorant heir to a bloodline curse that dooms him to die from bad luck.





	The Reluctant Guardian Angel

**Author's Note:**

> A big thanks to [trashgoblinwizardparty](https://archiveofourown.org/users/trashgoblinwizardparty) for the beta and for putting up with me!

There is cruel and unusual punishment and then there is this. Tom stares at the list of people he is supposed to be making miracles for and resists the urge to set it on fire. He’s learned from experience that the shrieking is not worth it. Paper can be so _loud._

He turns on his work laptop and looks through the database of lifelines. Now that the Fates have decided to move their loom to the cloud, he can no longer make the excuse of a long line to justify not working. Yay technology. How joyful. 

Most of them are unremarkable people with unremarkable lives and the miracles are easy. Sudden wealth, meeting the person of their dreams, finding a job, curing an illness, and so on. Most of them will cut off only a year or two from his ridiculously long prison sentence, and Tom finds it all ridiculous until he gets to the last name on the list.

Harry Potter. What an utterly ordinary name. Tom traces the lifeline of this boy. His parents will die when he is one in an accident involving a drunk, a piano, and a bad luck curse on the Potter bloodline. He will be sent to live with his mother’s family, where they will neglect and emotionally abuse him. The bad luck curse will prevent Potter from being removed from the family. He will attempt to become a police officer and die in a training accident, unremarkable and unmissed. 

It has been a few centuries since he has seen a bloodline curse this extreme, but the obvious miracle is easy. Tom transports himself to the home of Harry Potter, who has been in this world for seven days and written into existence for seven centuries. He breaks off the last charm from the gaudy bracelet on his wrist, and time slows. The world comes to a stop beside him. He stares at the still infant in the crib and makes a face. Not even the Fates can make him touch that mass of germs and spit, but luckily, he does not have to.

Tom Riddle, the man who has unwritten every curse except for the one that binds him to serve the Fates, unrolls a blank scroll and begins to counter the bloodline curse with perfect brush strokes. He misses the blink of large green eyes on the infant’s face. The scroll is complete. He sets it on the ground. A bolt of lightning strikes the house, goes through the roof, and stabs the scroll, rendering the spell useless. 

The infant begins to cry. Tom curses and takes the ruined counter curse, transporting himself back to headquarters. He hates chance magic.

This is going to take more effort than he thought. 

* * *

Tom Riddle does not fail. He is doing this because no two-bit chance magician from hundreds of years ago will get the better of him, not because he cares about the fate of some brat who can’t even speak yet. 

The Fates nix his idea to erase pianos from existence, the irritating lot. Something about changing the fate of history and all that. He hates how arbitrary it is, choosing what parts of fate they may change and what they may not. Still, as much as it galls him to admit, he is their servant until he works off his sentence. 

On the day Lily and James Potter are supposed to die, Tom dusts off his people-locator-and-tracking skills. (Luna calls them stalking skills, but that just sounds so uncouth, and Tom Riddle is anything but uncouth.) They have left Harry with a nanny and are eating dinner at a high-end restaurant as they celebrate their anniversary. A pianist is playing classical music in the background. In twenty-five to thirty minutes, depending on a few circumstances, a drunk man will stumble into the restaurant and set off a panic spell. The crowd will flee. Lily and James Potter will trip and fall and hit their heads. No one will help them, and they will bleed out right beneath the grand piano. Their bodies will be found the next day when investigators come. 

Or at least, that is what their lifelines say. Instead, Tom meets the drunk man before he comes into the restaurant and cuts his lifeline with a simple “Avada kedavra.” For once, he will not receive a reprimand for unsanctioned murder. The paperwork for cutting lifelines is a pain, but Luna has personally approved his request. She is his favourite of the Fates and not just for her willingness to accept murder as a miracle.

Lily and James Potter finish their dinner in peace. Tom follows them as they make their way home, and he watches them greet the nanny and Harry. “You’re a lucky brat,” Tom grumbles at the baby when his parents go to their bedroom. “What’s so special about you?” 

The baby gurgles at him, and Tom sweeps out of the room. 

* * *

This is the deal: Tom works off the one-million-year service contract with the Fates. (He doesn’t understand why the bloody thing is so _long_. Something about the number of people he killed when he was mortal and all that.) For every change he makes, every life he saves, he gets to reduce his sentence. If the person he saves will have a bigger positive impact on the world due to his actions, he gets to reduce more time. It has been over four thousand years, and he still has around eight hundred thousand years of lives to improve. Changing the fate of one-year-old Harry Potter cut down his sentence by 1,012 years. Tom is not sure what’s so important about Harry Potter, but he congratulates himself on choosing a good life to save.

The Fates are not unfair either. (He would consider calling them generous if not for their insistence on doing _good_ , as though the masses deserve it.) If he saves the same life more than once, each save still counts towards his contracts. Tom keeps an eye on Harry Potter’s lifeline throughout the years. It is not that he cares or is invested in anyway whatsoever. Harry is simply worth more than all the other names on his list. In twenty-two years, Tom has stopped Harry from falling off a broom and breaking his neck, being eaten by a kelpie, setting himself on fire, blowing himself up, and turning himself to stone. Altogether, that has reduced Tom’s sentence by over ten thousand years. Tom is content manipulating events and making miracles to counter the bloodline curse from afar, and he never meets the boy.

Not until Harry Potter walks into their fake cover story of a company’s office. “Hello?” the boy—man now, Tom supposes—asks the receptionist. Luna is on duty that day, pretending to be a lowly mortal as though she is not a god who has been around for eons. 

Tom looks up curiously at Harry from his cubicle in the back. He has a decent view of the situation, though Harry cannot see him. What is the man doing here? 

“Welcome to Kind Strangers,” Luna chirps. “How can I help you?” 

Harry lets out an embarrassing laugh. “I think I’m lost. Sorry, this happens to me a lot, but I’m looking for, erm…” He trails off as he digs around for something and pulls out a piece of paper. “The Office of Multi-dimensional Affairs?”

Tom chokes on that and pulls up his file on Harry’s lifeline. Of course the idiot boy would get involved in a department whose agents almost all die within five years of joining. The file now says Harry will die a week from today via massive internal bleeding when he accidentally looks at a Daiddronth in one of its eyes. This is what he gets for simply taking his eyes off the man for a month. _Don’t do it,_ he urges Luna silently. _Don’t you dare._

But of course she does. The Fates cannot change lifelines; that is why they need people like Tom. “A common mistake,” Luna says cheerfully. “You’re off by a street. Just go out the door, turn left at the end of the road, second building you see.” 

Tom curses and transports himself out of the office. He has about two minutes before Harry will pass him. It is not a lot of time, he has no time spell on his person to stop time, and he is out of ideas. All he knows is he cannot let Harry enter that building. 

His first instinct is to drop Harry into an endless hole, but Tom is not trying to drive him mad. Sensory deprivation is only fun in torture or consensual agreements. He magicks a highly acidic potion into a bottle. Just as Harry passes by, Tom pretends to stumble and spill the potion over the cheap suit. This is as much a miracle as murder, and Tom considers murder very much a miracle. What else silences fools and pests? 

The sizzling and smoke make Tom smile in satisfaction inwardly. “By the Fates, I’m so sorry,” Tom exclaims without meaning a single word he says and starts tearing the suit off Harry. 

Harry yelps. “What are you doing?” 

“This is a highly corrosive compound. If I don’t get your shirt off you before it eats through, you’ll be spending a good three weeks in magical casualties,” Tom snaps. “Stop squirming and help me.” 

The dress shirt and jacket are ruined, a steaming pile on the ground that is still bubbling as the acid works its way through the material. It’s one of Tom’s greatest inventions for dissolving bodies, and he hasn’t really had many chances to use it. Reluctantly, he pulls out the counter potion, a buffer to neutralise the acid, before the sidewalk also gets dissolved. “I am very sorry about that. Did I interrupt something important?”

“I had an interview at the Office of Multi-dimensional affairs,” Harry says gloomily. 

“Are you interested in diplomatic affairs?” Tom asks as he takes off his coat for Harry. The other man is a bit smaller, but the fit should not be a problem. Harry shrugs on the coat, and Tom feels a vicious burst of pleasure in seeing Harry covered by something he owns. He refuses to consider why.

“Not particularly,” Harry says. “I graduated from uni with a degree in numerology but couldn’t find a job in that field. This isn’t even the first time something unfortunate has happened to me right before an interview. It’s like I have the worst luck in the world.” 

Oh, darling, you have no idea, Tom doesn’t say. Instead, he offers a business card to Harry. “My name is Tom Riddle. Are you familiar with the Agency of Spiritual Safety?”

“The assholes.” Harry immediately slaps a hand over his mouth, eyes wide in comedic horror. “Sorry, I didn’t mean that.” The words come out muffled, and Harry looks like he might die from embarrassment. Tom itches to check and make sure that’s not going to happen. If anyone could accidentally die from humiliation, it would be Harry bloody Potter. 

“No, you are right; they are complete arseholes,” Tom agrees. “However, I have a friend in supernatural resources, and if you are interested, I could put in a good word for you. I know they are looking for someone to add to their wards and safety department, and they could probably use a numerologist.” 

Harry looks shocked, then delighted. “Really? You would do that for a stranger?” 

Tom smiles. “I do work for Kind Strangers. We are located in a building right around the corner.”

“I was just there,” Harry says. “Got lost on my way here. I was wondering, what is it you do?” 

“We change lives. People underestimate what a helping hand from a stranger can do to their lives.” Tom smirks at that. “Think of us as guardian angels. So about the job. Are you interested?” 

“If you’re sure, I would really like that, thank you. I’m Harry, by the way. Harry Potter.” 

“It is lovely to meet you, Harry Potter. I have a feeling we will be seeing more of each other around.”

**Author's Note:**

> You can find me on [tumblr](https://bluepandawrites.tumblr.com/)!


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